The pitiless rhythm of "Nanjemoy."

So in the dawn as perturbed and gray
They hid in the farm-house off the way,
And the worn assassin dozed in his chair,
A voice in his dreams or afloat in the air,
Like a spirit born in the Indian corn--
Immemorial, vague, forlorn,
And disembodied--murmured forever
The name of the old creek up the river.
"God of blood!" he said unto Herold,
As they groped in the dusk, lost and imperilled,
In the oozy, entangled morass and mesh
Of hanging vines over Allen's Fresh:
"The chirp of birds and the drone of frogs,
The lizards and crickets from trees and bogs
Follow me yet, pursue and ferret
My soul with a word which I used to enjoy,
As if it had turned on me like a spirit
And stabbed my ear with its 'Nanjemoy.'"

Ay! Great Nature fury or preacher
Makes, as she wists, of the tiniest creature--
Arming a word, as it floats on the mind,
With the dagger of wrath and the wing of the wind.
What, though weighted to take them down,
Their swimming steeds in the river they drown,
And paddle the farther shore to gain,
Chased by gunboats or lost in rain?
Many a night they try the ferry